Semester
Spring
Date of Graduation
2007
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
MS
College
Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources
Department
Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Committee Chair
Roy S. Nutter.
Abstract
Chat rooms provide a safe haven to discuss and at some times perform some types of crimes involving the internet. The anonymity provided by chat rooms combined with a general lack of records for most chat servers creates an environment where those who would perpetrate a crime may flourish. Current forms of investigation such as manually monitoring rooms or analyzing logs post-mortem require many man-hours with little to show or provide results too late to gather additional information.;In this thesis some methodologies are discussed in the design of a tool to automate the task of monitoring, logging, analyzing, locating users in a chat room discussing or taking part in criminal activities. Through the proposal of an architectural design for an internet chat room investigation tool which will automate the collection and analysis of chat room conversations, the burden on investigators to monitor the plethora of available chat room channels decreases. Using this design, a working implementation of the tool can be put into operation which will benefit investigating agencies currently using a manual or post-mortem approach to their investigations. This tool will reduce the number of man-hours invested in monitoring activity within IRC chat rooms or waiting for text searches of large chat logs to complete.
Recommended Citation
Brown, Dugald A., "Architecture for an automated IRC investigation tool" (2007). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 1792.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/1792